![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
When I moved into this 500-year-old house, I knew it was going to be cold. At the time, daytime highs were in the low teens Celsius, and while that wasn't cold per se, it was cool enough that the draughts – mostly coming from the authentic leaded faux-medieval 1970s windows – were plainly perceptible. The heating had been programmed to go half an hour in the morning and evening to keep the pipes from freezing, and that was ample; I turned it off mid-May and, aside from a particularly chilly week in June, didn't turn it on again until mid-November.
The kitchen is furnished with an Aga, which is essentially a gas update of the old wood- or coal-burning cast iron stove. It takes ages to heat up, but when it gets hot it stays hot for ages. During the summer I would only run it on the coolest day in the 7-day forecast, cooking everything I could and then living off salads and leftovers for the next week. The only downside to this system (aside from spending an entire day on my feet) was that the Aga heats the water, so most of the time I had no hot running water. However, I had been hearing about the health benefits of cold showers for years, and decided I might as well give it a go. To my surprise, after a few weeks I actually got to like them, and the prospect of a hot shower seemed gross and feverish. Maybe the Victorians were on to something.
Now, of course, it is cold – in fact the last few days have been about as cold as it ever gets around here, freak Siberian high pressure systems notwithstanding. The same advice that touted the benefits of cold showers started with 'since central heating means we don't adapt to the changing seasons anymore ...' so I was determined to try doing it the old-fashioned way and see how low I could go. It wasn't just machismo: my house in Cambridge had been kept rather cool as well, and I discovered when I went on my sailing trip that this gave me superpowers of resilience compared to my comfortably-heated crewmates who were miserable all the time. If I could adapt to an even colder house then I could be even more resilient, and British winter would have no power over me at all! (OK, maybe there was a little machismo.)
And, I have to say, it has worked. I have been persuaded to increase the heating to a whole hour in the morning and afternoon, with a short booster late in the evening in case I'm working past 11, which is the case more often than not, but so far I haven't needed more than that. There were a couple of uncomfortable weeks as the nights got longer in October, but then we had a warm spell in November that felt positively balmy, and now that we're back to freezing temps I am finding them no trouble at all. In fact, it was only this morning (foggy, -1°C) that I finally pulled out one of the lighter merino base layers I'd taken to Antarctica, a layer I'd sometimes gone without in the dry cold down there, but wore pretty consistently through March back in the UK. This acclimation thing, it turns out, actually works.
I bang the polar drum a lot, but something I wish I had more opportunity to talk about is how the seemingly superhuman men of the Heroic Age came from a very very different everyday life than we do. The most privileged of them went to ancient stone boarding schools with unheated dormitories, where toughening up was part of the curriculum. They all lived in houses warmed by coal-burning grates which had to be re-lit in the morning, and they all had draughty single-glazed windows. Many of them spent most of their life outdoors, in all weathers. They appeared to be made of different stuff because, well, they kind of were.
I am pleased to discover that some shadow of that physical resilience is still available to us pampered moderns without having to leave the comfort and convenience of home. Having visitors would be complicated – do I tell them to bundle up, or do I pump up the heating to be stiflingly warm? Luckily the pandemic has cut the Gordian knot for me, this year – no visitors! And I don't have to worry about cold depleting my immune system because I don't see anyone to catch a cold from. I can be as mad as I want in my historic hut, unchallenged.
Not gonna lie, though, resilience or no, it's nice to have a hot shower again.
The kitchen is furnished with an Aga, which is essentially a gas update of the old wood- or coal-burning cast iron stove. It takes ages to heat up, but when it gets hot it stays hot for ages. During the summer I would only run it on the coolest day in the 7-day forecast, cooking everything I could and then living off salads and leftovers for the next week. The only downside to this system (aside from spending an entire day on my feet) was that the Aga heats the water, so most of the time I had no hot running water. However, I had been hearing about the health benefits of cold showers for years, and decided I might as well give it a go. To my surprise, after a few weeks I actually got to like them, and the prospect of a hot shower seemed gross and feverish. Maybe the Victorians were on to something.
Now, of course, it is cold – in fact the last few days have been about as cold as it ever gets around here, freak Siberian high pressure systems notwithstanding. The same advice that touted the benefits of cold showers started with 'since central heating means we don't adapt to the changing seasons anymore ...' so I was determined to try doing it the old-fashioned way and see how low I could go. It wasn't just machismo: my house in Cambridge had been kept rather cool as well, and I discovered when I went on my sailing trip that this gave me superpowers of resilience compared to my comfortably-heated crewmates who were miserable all the time. If I could adapt to an even colder house then I could be even more resilient, and British winter would have no power over me at all! (OK, maybe there was a little machismo.)
And, I have to say, it has worked. I have been persuaded to increase the heating to a whole hour in the morning and afternoon, with a short booster late in the evening in case I'm working past 11, which is the case more often than not, but so far I haven't needed more than that. There were a couple of uncomfortable weeks as the nights got longer in October, but then we had a warm spell in November that felt positively balmy, and now that we're back to freezing temps I am finding them no trouble at all. In fact, it was only this morning (foggy, -1°C) that I finally pulled out one of the lighter merino base layers I'd taken to Antarctica, a layer I'd sometimes gone without in the dry cold down there, but wore pretty consistently through March back in the UK. This acclimation thing, it turns out, actually works.
I bang the polar drum a lot, but something I wish I had more opportunity to talk about is how the seemingly superhuman men of the Heroic Age came from a very very different everyday life than we do. The most privileged of them went to ancient stone boarding schools with unheated dormitories, where toughening up was part of the curriculum. They all lived in houses warmed by coal-burning grates which had to be re-lit in the morning, and they all had draughty single-glazed windows. Many of them spent most of their life outdoors, in all weathers. They appeared to be made of different stuff because, well, they kind of were.
I am pleased to discover that some shadow of that physical resilience is still available to us pampered moderns without having to leave the comfort and convenience of home. Having visitors would be complicated – do I tell them to bundle up, or do I pump up the heating to be stiflingly warm? Luckily the pandemic has cut the Gordian knot for me, this year – no visitors! And I don't have to worry about cold depleting my immune system because I don't see anyone to catch a cold from. I can be as mad as I want in my historic hut, unchallenged.
Not gonna lie, though, resilience or no, it's nice to have a hot shower again.
